


I Hate What I've Become, The Nightmare's Just Begun

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz struggles to deal with Caroline having turned her into a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hate What I've Become, The Nightmare's Just Begun

When Liz and her friends were in junior year, the same age Caroline was when she was turned, vampires had come to Mystic Falls. The official story had been the same animal attack bull that Liz would later find herself feeding to the townspeople after she became sheriff and the attacks started again on her watch. Some people, like Kelly Donovan, even believed it. But Liz, Bill, Abby, Miranda, Grayson, Richard and Carol all knew what had really happened. 

Bill had been angriest of all about it. Dean, the guy who’d been attacked, had been his best friend, or so Liz had thought at the time. Years later, when Bill had come out, she’d eventually found out that Dean had actually been Bill’s first boyfriend. But at the time, the group of friends had all been united in their hatred of vampires and determination to do whatever they could to make sure they never again returned and formed a presence in Mystic Falls.

Liz never thought at the time that anything would happen to change her views.

 

30 Years Later:

She looked into the mirror, and recognised and yet didn’t recognise the face looking back at the same time.

_I am the same Elizabeth Forbes._

_I am not the same Elizabeth Forbes._

On the face of it, yes, she was still the same Liz. She still wore the same face, retained the same memories. And yet another part of her knew that she could never be the same Liz again. She had become exactly what she had spent so much of her life hating. It had been easier for Caroline, because she hadn’t even known about vampires before she was turned and hadn’t formed the same opinions shared by her parents. The same moral conflict hadn’t been there for her.

 

One of the things that had made it easier for Liz to accept Caroline as a vampire was reminding herself that Caroline had had no choice in the matter. She hadn’t known what was happening when she’d been fed Damon’s blood after Tyler crashed the car, or even that she had it still in her system when Katherine killed her. After Bill had made the decision not to transition, Liz had blurted out to Caroline something she wished she hadn’t as soon as she’d said it: she asked Caroline whether she had ever considered not transitioning. But Caroline hadn’t seemed to mind the question, and had said that she hadn’t known that it was an option available to her at the time, Stefan not having gone through Vampire 101 with her until she’d already transitioned. But even if she had known, at the time she hadn’t had a lot of time to think. The nurse had wandered in with the blood bag and that was that. In hindsight, Caroline thought that knowing then what she knew now, she would still have turned. Liz hadn’t known quite what answer she was hoping to receive from Caroline, but was pleased that at least she’d got an honest one.

Yet knowing that Caroline hadn’t had any choice, Liz wondered how Caroline could have taken away her own choice in the matter, feeding her some of her blood and then snapping her neck without giving her a chance to say that wasn’t what she wanted.

She hadn’t considered the option of vampire blood when she first received her diagnosis. It hadn’t even occurred to her to think about it being an option until she’d heard Caroline asking Stefan why it wasn’t. But even once she knew that, she was at peace with the idea that she couldn’t be cured that way. Although it may not have been as long as she could have wished, Liz had lived her life protecting the people of Mystic Falls as far as possible, and she had rebuilt her relationship with Caroline.

Caroline was a lot stronger than she gave herself credit for. She had already survived so much in her life, and although she might not believe it now, Liz believed that Caroline would be able to handle her death and come through the other side. All she had needed was to give her one final Christmas, then time to explain things to her, to talk things through. She just hadn’t counted on collapsing in Caroline’s dorm room and being rushed to hospital before she had chance to do any of that.

Liz understood to some extent why Caroline had done it. She’d been the one to sit up with Caroline all night after Bill died, listening to Caroline talking about all her regrets about the fact that she and Bill had been estranged in the weeks leading up to his death and about all the things they’d never done together. “When I asked if he wanted me to call Steven,” Caroline had said, “Daddy said he hadn’t spoken to him in a while. They’d split up, and I never even knew. How could I not know something like that? How did we get so far apart?” And she knew that Caroline had harboured similar regrets about her and about the way their relationship had been tense in the past. She could understand why Caroline had wanted to keep her alive, to have more time with her.

Yet a part of her was furious with Caroline for taking her choice away from her.

The love she felt for Caroline mixed with the anger she felt at having her choice taken away from her, all those were heightened just as she had been warned they would be. She’d look at the people she’d once sworn to devote her life to protect, and all she could think of was the urge to feed from them. The vampirism felt more of a disease running through her veins than her original illness had been. Why could Caroline not just have accepted Liz’s fate in the way Liz herself had? Then Liz wouldn’t be facing this immortal life as the one thing she had been raised to hate.

Yet she understood now how wrong some of her old prejudices about vampires had been. Caroline was living proof that her previous belief that all vampires lacked humanity was an ill informed opinion. Elena, Stefan, and even Damon once she’d got to know him properly – none of them were the monsters she had always perceived vampires as. And Liz didn’t have to be either. She still had this choice, she didn’t have to lose her humanity, she could be the same Liz she had always been. She’d do it for Caroline, and for herself.


End file.
